Over a week on, and hundreds of think pieces later, it would seem unnecessary to explain that the Hollaback video refers not to Gwen Stefani’s Hollaback Girl, but to the video entitled 10 Hours of Walking in New York City as a Woman, produced by Rob Bliss Creative for Hollaback, an international organisation dedicated to ending street harassment against women. (More…)
Newsstands aren’t what they used to be. Onetime indicators of high circulation periodicals, today, their selection tends towards a combination of promoted titles [think advertising placement, pushing readers online] and community newspapers. Berlin’s newsstands oftentimes lean towards the latter, offering titles in multiple languages, ranging from Albanian to Turkish. (More…)
Like millions of other Americans who made the decision — or mistake, depending on your point of view — to donate money to Democratic Party candidates in the past, my inbox was filled with messages for months warning me that only the generosity of ordinary citizens like myself could prevent a Republican landslide in the midterm elections. Sometimes these requests bore an air of reasonability. But most sounded desperate. (More…)
In the early 1900s, there were more than 100,000 tigers worldwide, with the greatest number on the Indian sub-continent. In the twenty-first century, one country has overtaken India by having a larger tiger population than any other. The Humane Society of the United States reports that there are between 5000 and 7000 of the iconic big cats in the USA, but fewer than 400 of them are held in officially recognised zoos. (More…)
No one was surprised when Canada lost to Portugal for a seat at the Security Council in October 2010. Rumour had it that it was a direct result of a new pro-Israeli foreign policy being spearheaded by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. We may never know if this is true or not, but it’s undeniable that Canada’s shift towards an increasingly uncritical support for Israel has deeply affected its international standing. (More…)
Few issues strike so close to home as human-driven climate change. Although one form or another of this explanation has been acknowledged by the vast majority of scientists, the general public has proved less ready to accept that this is the case. A recent Pew study revealed that 67% of Americans thought that there was “solid evidence that the Earth is warming,” with only 44% conceding that human beings are causing it. (More…)
No clichés here. As far as leftist flyers go, they’re don’t exactly inspire you to speak truth to power. Dispensing with images of marchers standing up to the man, and police beating up protestors, they relied more on sarcasm, and a pronounced sense of contempt, to make their point. Feeling flushed down the toilet? Sick of the bread, and the circuses, and promises of pussy? We relate. (More…)
Compared to other German cities or metropoles like Paris and London, Berlin has benefited from its lack of meaningful antiquity. Little more than a village prior to Prussia’s ascendancy in the 1700s and still not very impressive in Germany’s early years as a unified nation, it was free to develop as a fully modern city. Not only cartographically and architecturally, but ideologically. (More…)
The problem with New York City is that it has to live up to itself. New Yorkers constantly have to prove they are worthy and, at the same time, make enough cash to survive. Don’t get me wrong. Portland’s timber industry has never been saintly. But there’s just less at stake in lumberjack posturing here, and there’s more time for humanity behind the nose rings than in Williamsburg. (More…)
Portland’s south waterfront venue was open, though Tears For Fears weren’t due to play for another seven hours. The main stage was flanked by industrial sized mesh banners of Captain Pabst who bears, at least at that scale, an uncanny resemblance to Colonel Sanders. If it is Pabst, there’s no sign of him on the cans, although Project Pabst did provide festival-themed PBR souvenir cans complete with the Project unicorn for an investment of a mere $4. (More…)
Following the Syrian Day of Rage, on March 15th, 2011, the city of Daraa quickly became the strongest flashpoint. By March 18th, thousands of protesters were roaring across Daraa, leading to a brutal suppression by security forces. When resistance continued into late April, Assad directed thousands of troops to lay siege of the city. (More…)
Europe means diversity. Stroll down streets as far away from one another as Stuttgart’s Koenigstrasse, Milan’s Corso Buenos Aires, or London’s Oxford Circus, and the insight will be the same. Everyone is from somewhere else. Chinese, Arab, Nigerian, Indian, Roma. The mix tends to be relatively consistent, if not exactly the same. (More…)